The 21st-Century Brain: Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mind

Neuroscientists claim to understand the roots of human personality and behaviour, of language and even of consciousness itself. Can they cure Alzheimer’s? Can human behaviour be controlled with drugs? Rose explores these claims via the evolutionary route.

Science & Math

Rose, Steven

History & Philosophy

Vintage Books

Steven Rose's The Making of Memory is about just that, in both its senses: the biological processes by which we humans - and other animals - learn and remember, and how researchers can explore these mechanisms. But it is also about much more. When the first edition of this fascinating book won the Science book Prize in 1993, the judges described it as 'a riveting read...a first-hand account by a practicing scientist working at the forefront of medical research and Rose does not duck the issues which that raises.' Now ten years on, research has itself moved forward, and Rose has taken the opportunity to fully revise the book. But this is more than mere revision. Where ten years ago he argued the case for research on memory because it is the most extraordinary of human attributes, Rose's own research has now opened the doors to a potential new treatment for Alzheimer's Disease undreamed of a decade ago, and in an entirely new chapter he describes how this potential breakthrough has occurred.

The Making of Memory

Biological Sciences

Vintage

Today, genes are held to account for every aspect of our lives, from social inequalities to health, sexual preference etc. Professor Rose emphasizes the organism rather than the gene, and offers a bold new perspective on biology that acknowledges the essentially complex nature of life.

Lifelines: Life Beyond the Gene, rev. ed.

Looking at biochemistry, this book discusses its methods and finds, including theories which approach the origins of life on earth and techniques which help to explain viruses and create pharmacological cures.

Chemistry Of Life

Penguin Uk

Literature & Fiction

the conscious brain

Medical Books

Vintage softcover

"Essential reading for anyone interested in biology and evolution" Ghillean Prince of the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism (Lane Science)

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

Penguin

First published in 1966, THE CHEMISTRY OF LIFE has held its own as a clear and authoritative introduction to the world of biochemistry. This fourth edition has been fully updated and revised to include the latest developments in DNA and protein synthesis, cell regulation, and their social and medical implications.

Chemistry Of Life 4e

Reductionism--understanding complex processes by breaking them into simpler elements--dominates scientific thinking around the world and has certainly proved a powerful tool, leading to major discoveries in every field of science. But reductionism can be taken too far, especially in the life sciences, where sociobiological thinking has bordered on biological determinism. Thus popular science writers such as Richard Dawkins, author of the highly influential The Selfish Gene, can write that human beings are just "robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." Indeed, for many in science, genes have become the fundamental unit for understanding human existence: genes determine every aspect of our lives, from personal success to existential despair: genes for health and illness, genes for criminality, violence, and sexual orientation. Others would say that this is reductionism with a vengeance. In Lifelines, biologist Steven Rose offers a powerful alternative to the ultradarwinist claims of Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett and others. Rose argues against an extreme reductionist approach that would make the gene the key to understanding human nature, in favor of a more complex and richer vision of life. He urges instead that we focus on the organism and in particular on the organism's lifeline: the trajectory it takes through time and space. Our personal lifeline, Rose points out, is unique--even identical twins, with identical genes at birth, will differ over time. These differences are obviously not embedded in our genes, but come about through our developmental trajectory in which genes, as part of the biochemical orchestra of trillions of cells in each human body, have an important part--but only a part--to play. To illustrate this idea, Rose examines recent research in modern biology, and especially two disciplines--genetics (which looks at the impact of genes on form) and developmental biology (which examines the interaction between the organism and the environment)--and he explores new ideas on biological complexity proposed by scientists such as Stuart Kauffman. He shows how our lifelines are constructed through the interplay of physical forces--such as the intrinsic chemistry of lipids and proteins, and the self-organizing and stabilizing properties of complex metabolic webs--and he reaches a startling conclusion: that organisms are active players in their own fate, not simply the playthings of the gods, nature, or the inevitable workings out of gene-driven natural selection. The organism is both the weaver and the pattern it weaves. Lifelines will be a rallying point for all who seek an alternative to the currently fashionable, deeply determinist accounts which dominate popular science writing and, in fact, crowd the pages of some of the major scientific journals. Based on solid, state-of-the-art research, it not only makes important contributions to our understanding of Darwin and natural selection, but will swing the pendulum back to a richer, more complex view of human nature and of life.

Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism

Oxford University Press

A distinct voice in the nature/nurture debate, Rose's series of essays are a response to the biological reductionism of Richard Dawkins's book, The Selfish Gene (O.U.P., 1990), which insists that all aspects of human life are in our genes, and everything arises as a consequence of natural selection. Rose argues that life depends on the elaborate web of interactions that occur within cells, organisms, and ecosystems, and in which D.N.A. has but one part to play.

Lifelines: Life beyond the Gene

Philosophy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rose, Steven. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rose, Steven

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rose, Steven. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The 21st-Century Brain: Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mind

The Making of Memory

Lifelines: Life Beyond the Gene, rev. ed.

Chemistry Of Life

Chemistry Of Life

the conscious brain

Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism (Lane Science)

Chemistry Of Life 4e

Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism

Lifelines: Life beyond the Gene